Raphael John-Lall

Sabi­na Gomez, the re­cent­ly re­tired at the Min­istry of Labour, is ad­vis­ing com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es that if they fail to fol­low due process in In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions, it can be very cost­ly for their busi­ness­es.

In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Gomez, who is now an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant in the pri­vate sec­tor, gave sta­tis­tics which show the alarm­ing trend in trade dis­putes at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

“At the mo­ment, there are rough­ly 45 ac­tive trade unions re­port­ing trade dis­putes. That will tell you the busi­ness of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is grow­ing and boom­ing. When you have at­tor­neys who are form­ing trade unions for the pur­pose of re­port­ing trade dis­putes to the min­is­ter and then rep­re­sent­ing their clients at the In­dus­tri­al Court, what does that tell you?

“The busi­ness is boom­ing but why? Over 1,000 dis­putes are re­port­ed every year. The ma­jor­i­ty of dis­putes are ter­mi­na­tion of ser­vices, non-pay­ment of wages and 95 per cent of the dis­putes are rights dis­putes. Train­ing of man­agers and su­per­vi­sors is crit­i­cal be­cause they are the ones tak­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. There­fore, hav­ing a clear un­der­stand­ing of is­sues such as pro­gres­sive dis­ci­pline and nat­ur­al jus­tice are very im­por­tant be­cause labour rights are hu­man rights,” she said.

It is a very time con­sum­ing and cost­ly ex­er­cise for com­pa­nies to take mat­ters to the In­dus­tri­al Court, Gomez warns.

“When a mat­ter goes to the court, the com­pa­ny has to pay the con­sul­tant and some­times it costs $60,000 and more, ac­cord­ing to the type of is­sue it is or how long the case is. If a big com­pa­ny hires a se­nior coun­sel, it can cost $100,000 and more. It is a lot of mon­ey.

“It may not al­ways be the em­ploy­ers’ fault but it is the em­ploy­ers’ busi­ness to make sure all pro­ce­dures are fol­lowed so that if they de­cide to go to the court, due process was fol­lowed. Oth­er­wise the can­dle would cost more than the fu­ner­al. Maybe it is a re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion is­sue and com­pa­nies are hir­ing per­sons who are the wrong fit or the cul­ture of the or­gan­i­sa­tion needs to be ex­am­ined. It all starts from the head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” she said.

She added that good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices al­so mean that com­pa­nies can bet­ter mar­ket their brand.

“As a good em­ploy­er, busi­ness own­er, your brand should be im­por­tant. You do not want to end up in the In­dus­tri­al Court be­cause when you have a judge­ment against you, it is there for the en­tire world to see. You should have good prac­tices. Al­so hav­ing mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with em­ploy­ees is key for busi­ness be­cause some­times you may miss out on a good idea from some­one who is not in man­age­ment but they have their ear to the ground. It is im­por­tant to treat em­ploy­ees in a way so that they do not sim­ply see it as a job where they show up just to be paid a salary.”

Last week, Gomez was the guest speak­er at a sem­i­nar host­ed by the T&T Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee on the top­ic of equip­ping mem­bers for the world of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. She ex­pand­ed on some of these is­sues in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Some of the top­ics she spoke on in­clud­ed work­ers’ rights, nat­ur­al jus­tice, pro­gres­sive dis­ci­pline and griev­ance han­dling.

She re­tired from her po­si­tion as chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Labour in Oc­to­ber and has al­most 40 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, hav­ing worked at both the In­dus­tri­al Court and the Min­istry of Labour.

She al­so com­ment­ed on the sore is­sue of brain drain among the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, which has led to doc­tors and nurs­es mi­grat­ing to bet­ter pay­ing jobs in the in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries. She re­vealed that many nurs­es told her that they would be hap­py to stay in T&T if their com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages and work­ing con­di­tions are bet­ter.

“They told me they do not want to mi­grate, they want to stay here. The nurs­es in T&T are high­ly qual­i­fied and when they go to the UK, they are quick­ly pro­mot­ed. How­ev­er, the main com­plaint ex­pressed in the ses­sion was the shift sys­tem where they are forced to work an ad­di­tion­al shift if some­one does not show up for du­ty and they do not get over­time, then they are not hap­py. Em­ploy­ers must look at these is­sues, if em­ploy­ees are over­worked, then it af­fects con­cen­tra­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. They al­so ex­pressed the view that they have to make de­ci­sions whether to obey the in­struc­tion to con­tin­ue work­ing or pick up their chil­dren. It is the idea of hav­ing a ros­ter of re­tired nurs­es to ad­dress that sit­u­a­tion or even work­ing with an NGO to have nurs­es who want to vol­un­teer their ser­vices.”

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

She en­cour­aged man­agers and busi­ness own­ers to have di­a­logue with em­ploy­ees on work­place is­sues, in­stead of in­still­ing “fear” in them.

“Some­times some em­ploy­ers do not view work­ers as be­ing hu­man. Work­ers across the board in T&T op­er­ate un­der fear. They are afraid to speak out as their man­agers would tell them, if you do not like it, leave the job. You would find this most­ly in the pri­vate sec­tor as work­ers are afraid to lose their jobs. The Min­istry of Labour has had a few dis­putes re­port­ed by trade unions of work­ers be­ing ver­bal­ly abused. How­ev­er, there are many more per­sons who com­plain about be­ing ver­bal­ly abused and con­tin­ue to work un­der hard­ship and duress as there is bul­ly­ing and ha­rass­ment that oc­curs in the work­place.”

Gomez lament­ed that sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is still a ma­jor prob­lem in work­places in T&T, ar­gu­ing that this coun­try is trail­ing oth­er Caribbean coun­tries in hav­ing leg­is­la­tion to deal with this is­sue. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment it neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the work­place.

T&T al­so has its Na­tion­al Work­place Pol­i­cy on Sex­u­al Ha­rass­ment (2019) which is a sub­set of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) Con­ven­tion 190 which is the Vi­o­lence and Ha­rass­ment Con­ven­tion.

“The sit­u­a­tion of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is bad, more than we could ever imag­ine and it af­fects both men and women in the work­place. The Min­istry of Labour through its Con­cil­i­a­tion, Ad­vi­so­ry and Ad­vo­ca­cy Di­vi­sion has con­duct­ed nu­mer­ous out­reach ex­er­cis­es both in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor and we were con­front­ed with so many sto­ries that you may not be­lieve it. Some per­sons broke down in tears re­lat­ing their sto­ry that went un­re­port­ed be­cause of fear,” said Gomez.

She urged em­ploy­ers to adopt more mod­ern man­age­ment prac­tices as these is­sues take a toll on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and af­fect the bot­tom line of busi­ness­es in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“When you have is­sues of late com­ing, ab­sen­teeism on the job, those is­sues are sys­temic and must be ad­dressed. Of course, there is a cost at­tached and the em­ploy­er will have to get an­oth­er per­son to fill in for that shift or over­time. It is a dou­ble-edge sword in terms of mu­tu­al re­spect.

At the same time, she said em­ploy­ees must have re­spect for em­ploy­ers and busi­nes­sown­ers and the suc­cess of busi­ness­es re­ly on all stake­hold­ers work­ing to­geth­er.

“Nev­er use abu­sive lan­guage to your boss­es. You can dis­agree with them and even if the su­per­vi­sor us­es that lan­guage, let the em­ploy­ees write and com­plain to some­one high­er or if it’s the own­er of the busi­ness and the sit­u­a­tion is un­bear­able then seek the ad­vice of a third par­ty. This be­hav­iour may be preva­lent in a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness where there is no for­mal struc­ture and com­plain­ing will some­times re­sult in im­me­di­ate dis­missal. The em­ploy­er must recog­nise that the em­ploy­ee is there to of­fer a ser­vice, the em­ploy­ee did not show up to work to be abused.”